Friday, April 9, 2010

The Tale of two Bundt Cakes

This week was my turn to bring treats to work. I wasn't about to spend money on this roomful of nerds I work with no matter how badly I wanted a dozen Banbury Cross Donuts. (Plus I wouldn’t want to share those) So I decided to make a bundt cake. I think the problem started when I ran out of Pam cooking spray for baking and had to start a new can of it. That stuff comes out fast when it's new and the pan for the Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake got doused like a kid at the beach with an obsessive parent armed with sunscreen. When it came time to flip that cake out, I sweat it leapt out of the pan before I even began to turn it over. It wasn't a fast graceful exit either, not like those Olympic divers who can do 3 back flips, a three quarter twist, paint their toenails and then slip in the water without a splash. It was more like watching the a Nature Channel show when they're attaching tracking devises to lions and they open the cage door and the lion rushes out all angry and mad but then realizes it's still half doped up on tranquilizers and falls over drooling and growling all the same time. That was my cake, the drugged lion trying to attack me while falling over drooling all over the counter and the kitchen floor.
I should have known better since this has happened to me before the first time I ever tried Pam for Baking.
I stood there looking at it for a minute or two, took a picture of it, then put a big bowl over it so it wouldn’t go stale and went to bed. In the morning after the animal tranquilizers had worn off and the cake had calmed down, I managed to get about half of it looking good. (What's with the messy kitchen in the background, I swear I just cleaned it the other day!)
I sliced it up and took it to work for Friday Treats and it was eaten up without a second thought to it once being an angry drooling lion. It probably didn't hurt that I'd made a second cake that had perfectly dripping glaze and sparkled with cinnamon and sugar. Oh man that cake was as good as it looks too. It was called a Cinnamon Crown Cake but I think I'd like to rename it the Cinnamon Halo Cake…but then whenever I think of halos I think of the time in college we played "Would You Rather" with Rufus and he asked, "Would you rather have a permanent sausage halo or leave a trail of cayenne pepper everywhere you went." The image of a sausage halo has ruined all halos for me since. I'll stick with Cinnamon Crown Cake.
On a side note, I was listening to Jack Johnson on my way to work today. Doesn't he just make you want to sit on the beach while your boyfriend plays you songs on his guitar..and then go and join a peace rally?

I'll take them both

Quotes I try to live by

"There's plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket, there's only five of them in the whole world, and that's all there's ever going to be. Only a dummy would give this up for something as common as money. Are you a dummy?" -Grandpa George

"Be a half-assed crusader, a part-time fanatic. Don’t worry to much about the fate of the world. Saving the world is only a hobby. Get out there and enjoy the world, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, husbands, wives; climb mountains, run rivers, get drunk, do whatever you want to do while you can, before it’s too late." –Edward Abbey

Life is hard? True- but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks every bone in our bodies. -Edward Abbey

"Candy doesn't have to have a point. That's why it's candy." -Charlie Bucket